A Letter to Burn
by trufflemores
Summary: 3.23. Barry had more to say before going into the Speed Force, so he wrote it down.


_Dear Iris:_

 _It didn't hurt._

 _Physically, I mean. No one wants to hear their loved one died in agony._

 _So, rest assured: it didn't hurt._

 _But I looked at you, Iris, and I knew this was going to bleed, for months, for years._ _I had to hope that someday it would cease. I had to, or I never could have walked away from you. I had to believe that you would find a way to go on, even when it hurt so much you couldn't breathe._

 _Because nothing, and no one, can stop you. Not even this terrible, titanic thing we call loss._

 _I know loss too well._

 _It wasn't always self-inflicted. I can still see the midnight blue top hat that the Reaper wore to my mother's funeral on that cold autumn day, sixteen years ago. The Reaper –- the officiant –- was debonair, and civil, and tried to make the consumptive fire burn quieter. He apologized to me but not to my face. He stood at a podium and talked about a person he didn't know, in front of an audience that did not include my father, and tried to make it seem like I didn't want to come running back, aching for a shovel, anything to get her out of that box._

 _I wish I could say that Mom was the last person I ever found under a white sheet. I didn't plan on becoming a forensic scientist. Not at first. I liked fission, fusion, clean, nuclear, emotionless science. But within a month of the murder I realized that nobody - not the cops, not the shrinks - was going to believe me. I was all she had._ _And I couldn't let it go. I knew the truth._ _Every day my dad stayed in prison was a reminder that I had to prove it or he was going to die in there. I_ _f no one else was going to look for answers –- if they were going to let the case run cold –- then I had to make the case myself._

 _I got what I needed and found a vocation in it. The dead became part of my day job, just another grim aspect of my chosen profession. I could accept the morbid into my life, accept a certain pervasive numbness to grief, in order to cope with this heavy back-breaking thing we call Death._

 _Death is part of my job. Death punches in every morning and shares a cup of coffee with us; Death is coming for us, gunning for us. Death is sitting in a frame labelled "Hero, and Friend," with the image of an officer who will never walk through those doors again._

 _I don't know when I stopped having nightmares about the Reaper in a top hat. I can't say when I stopped seeing him at night, reappearing to tell me that you or Joe or Dad, hell, anyone, had died. I don't know why I was drawn into the darkness that I feared, pulled into the places I couldn't inhabit in my own life. But this is who I've become._

 _You would think I would be more immune to seeing people die, but I'm not. I can't unsee their expressions when they realize that they're not going to make it. I can't help but feel responsible for it –- like if I hadn't blinked, the threat would have passed by, or if I had just run a little faster, I could have beaten the cold blast arcing for that security guard._

 _I ran almost a thousand miles on the treadmill that night. I couldn't stop seeing his helpless terror before it ended._

 _Emotionally, I don't think I ever stopped running. Running faster and faster, desperate to outrun the inevitable, to delay it for as long as I could, to save as many people as my arms could carry. I ran, from dusk until dawn, afraid that if I slept someone would suffer._

 _You started to notice that I wasn't sleeping well. Soon I was sick, and tired. Coming up with excuses for you became painful._

 _But one thing remained clear: I couldn't stop running. I couldn't stop running, Iris. I tried to put it to bed at night and awoke with a scream halfway out of my chest, begging for another tragedy not to happen. I spent hours at work in a dazed cold sweat trying to focus on the papers and not on the people I needed to be out saving._

 _After some tipping point, I bought myself a long weekend: Singh took one look at me and told me to go home, and I left, but I wouldn't be home for another eight hours._

 _I don't know when to punch out. I don't know how to stop. I don't know if I can –- if this great and terrible gift will ever allow me to slow down –- but I do know that no matter how badly I feel, I have to try to save them._

 _Or else the inevitable will take everyone from me._

 _When we lost Eddie._

 _When we lost Eddie, I wasn't sure I could grieve for him. It felt too close, like the bullet was lodged in my chest, right beside my heart. If I took one deep breath, then it would puncture, and I would bleed out. Rather than seeking help, I held my breath for three months. I tried not to think about the bullet. I tried to keep all of you away from the gun. It didn't work._

 _Ronnie, I didn't know well –- but I knew enough to let Caitlin cry for him, for both of us. But w_ _hen Al Rothstein died, I didn't cry._

 _I don't know why I stopped crying for them. When the nightly Reaper visits came to mean "I'm here to help ease the pain" rather than "I'm here to hurt you." I woke up and felt guilty. How could I be relieved that people were dead? It wasn't how justice worked. None of it was how justice worked._

 _And then –-_

 _Then Dad died._

 _…_ _I still can't talk about Dad._

 _I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

 _I'm never going to be able to say 'sorry' enough for what I did after that night._

 _I owe apologies to Cisco and Dante and the entire Ramon family. I owe them to John Diggle and Lyla Michaels and their daughter Sara. I owe them to Rip Hunter and the countless soldiers who are fighting in a war that I started. I owe them to every person who didn't survive the second time I let history play out._

 _I still don't know how it all works. At this point, I don't know if I want to._ _Ignorance is bliss, and I know more than I ever wanted to._

 _Then one day I met the real Reaper, and he stood eight feet tall in a black-and-blue suit and plunged a sword through your chest._

 _I don't know how many times I had that nightmare. I lost count. I didn't want to sleep at all, only drifted off when I couldn't stay awake, forcing myself out of bed as early as I could to get away from those dark, unconscious tidings. When Savitar finally showed himself, I wish I could say that I didn't recognize him, that I would never be that person, but I could already see what two years with the Speed Force had done to me._

 _Imagine what two thousand could do._

 _Then the Speed Force called me home._

 _Like I said: it didn't hurt. Physically._

 _Emotionally?_

 _They haven't invented a strong enough word to describe how badly I wanted to wrap you in my arms and never let go. I know loss too well, and I wish you never had to._

 _But you are strong. You can survive this._

 _If I never come home, you have to know this -– I loved you. I love you._

 _I will always love you, Iris._

 _I hope you never find this. If you don't, it means one thing –-_

 _This story doesn't end here. It doesn't end in tragedy. It doesn't end with me leaving this vague promise to return that I may not be able to keep, and you in your enduring grief._

 _I wish you didn't have to endure anything. I wish your life was as beautiful as you are. I wish for a lot of things._

 _But above all else, I wish for your happiness._

 _Yours, forever:_

 _Barry_


End file.
